Staying Ahead of the Clouds

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

It’s hard not to notice that the clouds are rolling in. But what they really bring is nicer weather. Okay…I won’t be the last one to push the overdone “cloud analogy”, but for those people out there who are hip-deep in the cloud movement, there certainly seems to be strong reason to believe the winds are strong and that the weather is going to be changing dramatically (there’s that analogous text again).

No longer a possible notion, idea or discussion point, the whole cloud concept has been getting considerable traction in mainstream IT operations. It has corporate applications of course, but it is also getting well known by the general public who are becoming more aware of its possibilities. Soon it will be as commonplace a term as “WiFi”--and in some circles, it might already have that same degree of popularity.

But what is up and coming for this technological evolutionary jump, and what will be needed to support it?

Mobility and MotilityMobile devices and handhelds. When the various phones and assistants were created, it probably wasn’t the original intent to soon take their inherent powers. But increasingly, the role of this type of equipment is shifting away from its ability to process and toward its ability to access.

Being mobile used to mean being limited by the functional ability of your